This invention deals with a process to find the stability of oil mixtures, including shale oils and distilled fractions thereof. More precisely, the invention concerns a process to determine the stability of oil mixtures, including shale oils, as well as the distilled fractions thereof, by measuring the chemical polarity of such mixtures.
This invention is also intended to determine the chemical stability of any carbohydrate mixtures usually met with in oils from several sources, and contaminated by nitrogen, sulphur and exygen compounds.
The stability of an oil mixture is the direct outcome of its chemical polarity, since polar substances are the chemically reactive ones and consequently the more unstable ones. Hence by finding the chemical polarity of a mixture its stability can be gauged, that is, the lower its chemical polarity, numerically, the more stable and of better quality will the mixture be.
Measurement of the chemical stability of oil mixtures is likewise useful in the case of emulsions of oil mixtures in water. Whenever such emulsions have to be broken by means of a non-ionic surfactant the chemical polarity of the surfactant must be greater than that of the emulsion of the oil mixture in water, in order to displace the natural oil surfactants at the water-oil interface. The higher the polarity of an oil or oil mixture the better it will emulsify water and the polarity of a de-emulsifier to break such emulsion must be still higher. The process used in this invention as shown herein provides an answer to this question, since by measuring just one number--that of chemical polarity--non-ionic surfactant most suitable to separate a given emulsion of oils or of oil mixtures can be found. Hence the inventive process is aimed at finding what proportion of each oil there has to be in a given mixture in order to arrive at a given chemical polarity. An emulsion of oils in water may be destabilized with the aid of any non-ionic surfactant that has a chemical polarity higher than that of the oil mixture. It should be noted that a non-ionic surfactant molecule, since it is an amphyphilic kind of substance, contains both non-polar and polar groups in the same molecule, the non-polar moiety being a chain of hydrocarbons and the polar one being brought about by functional organic groups. Hence the polar and non-polar moieties in oils are made up of different molecules: hydrocarbons, thiophenes, etc. In the amphyphilic compounds, however, polar and non-polar moieties are both in the same molecule. The inventive process, namely, to measure the chemical stability of oil mixtures by measuring the chemical polarity of such mixtures, also applies to non-ionic surfactant mixtures, to finding the lowest chemical polarity needed for a surfactant to break an oil/water emulsion of known chemical polarity, etc.
Therefore the chemical polarity of any mixtures of non-ionic compounds containing both non-polar and polar moieties, whether or not such polar and non-polar moities make up separate molecules or one same molecule (as occurs with a great many organic, pharmaceutical and biologically active compounds), may be found, thus enabling the best proportion of each component of the mixture for a given application to be arrived at.